Scientists at Base Pair
Biotechnologies have been studying aptamers and developing them on a
research basis since 2004 and began recently offering these services
commercially. With a patented multiplexed approach we can develop custom
aptamers at unprecedented time and cost.

Dr.
Bill Jackson

President

Bill Jackson serves as
President and Chief Scientist of Base Pair Biotechnologies. Prior to formal
spinout of aptamer discovery services under Base Pair, Bill guided numerous
aptamer selections on both a service basis and for active research projects
at parent company, BioTex, Inc. (also in Houston, TX).

Dr. Jackson is still
partially employed by BioTex where he serves as a Senior Scientist on a
number of synergistic research projects involving aptamers and biosensing.
He joined BioTex in 2005 while concurrently finishing his Ph.D. in Chemical
Engineering at nearby University of Houston. He has the somewhat rare
distinction of funding his own doctoral dissertation while serving as
Principal Investigator on a NASA-funded SBIR grant. At the University of
Houston, his research focused primarily on the development of novel nucleic
acid diagnostics using both mass spectrometry and nucleic acid microarrays.
Since that time, Dr. Jackson has served as Principal Investigator on 11+
SBIR grants and co-investigator on several more. He has been issued 4 U.S.
patents with 10+ pending.

In previous employment Bill
has been involved in the development of a wide variety of analytical
chemistry equipment including instruments still in service aboard the
International Space Station. Dr. Jackson received the B.S. in biomedical
engineering from Texas A&M University in 1997 and a B.A. in Spanish in 1998.

CEOCFO:Dr. Jackson, “Base Pair
is the Aptamer Discovery Company.” Would you tell us what to company does?

Dr. Jackson:We develop reagents for
new diagnostic tests. A small portion of our customers are interested in
aptamers for therapeutics. In general an aptamer can be thought of as a
placement for antibodies. Antibodies are what are typically used to bind to
something else in a complicated biological mixture like a blood sample.
Aptamers are an alternative comprising DNA or RNA rather than protein. This
gives our aptamer reagents certain advantages over the status quo. We go
through an entirely in vitro process in contrast to antibody
production, which is done in animals. Once identified, an aptamer can be
made by simple synthetic chemistry making them much easier to standardize
and with more consistent performance. Aptamers are currently being
incorporated in tests for cancer, pathogens, as well as carcinogens and
other compounds in the environment.

CEOCFO:Are there many companies
working in the same arena?

Dr. Jackson:I would say there are on
the order of ten in the world. We are one of the few that focus solely on
this as a service. Aptamers were first described in 1990, but the
intellectual property was really concentrated in just one or two firms.
Starting in about 2010 some of the intellectual property began to expire and
that allowed us to offer this as a service to others. There are not really
that many companies right now. We expect more to enter as competitors, but
we are one of a very few, right now.

CEOCFO:What do you understand
about aptamers that perhaps others do not?

Dr. Jackson:One aspect is that we
can make them faster and cheaper. We have a patented process for
multiplexing the technology. That means that we can make aptamers to
multiple targets at the same time in parallel. At the end of any aptamer
selection process the DNA or the RNA gets sequenced and we have a way for
deciphering which aptamer belongs to which target so that we can do multiple
targets in parallel. Therefore, for the last twenty years people have gone
through the process called SELEX and that has been done against one target
at a time. It could take weeks to months and you could come out with
reagents that just bind one thing, whereas right now we can go through our
process and have aptamers to thirty targets, simultaneously. So that is one
aspect that is novel to Base Pair; we can make aptamers to many things and
more efficiently. Then we have some “trade secret” know-how and a lot of
experience, so we think we know what we are doing. Part of our service,
which is somewhat unique, compared to our competitors, is that we also do a
lot of characterization. We basically prove to the customer that these
things work before we hand them over. Not all of our competitors do that.

CEOCFO:Is it because they do
not always work?

Dr. Jackson:It takes some
sophisticated equipment to do the necessary binding studies. There are
several different types of instruments that can do these things. We have
experience with most of them. Therefore, we can do a quantitative
measurement of what is called the KD or Dissociation Constant of
the aptamers before we hand them over. We do very basic but important
characterization of all of our products before the customer begins to test
them in their own system.

CEOCFO:When someone needs an
aptamer is there anything else they could use or is it just a matter of
which aptamer it would be? Is there even a choice about using an aptamer?

Dr. Jackson:There certainly is. That
is a good question. The standard or de facto choice would normally be
an antibody. That is the established technology. We have a challenge of
convincing the customer to adopt a new technology. Aptamers have a number of
potential advantages, but they are not as well understood in the
marketplace. Therefore, there is a little bit of trepidation sometimes and
we have to demonstrate that these things actually work. The advantages are
that, unlike a protein based antibody, these nucleic acids can by
synthesized, so it is more like a chemical; whereas the antibody has to come
from an animal or expressed and purified from a cell line. Therefore, there
is more variability and more steps involved in producing the antibody. Later
in someone’s product commercialization program, aptamers offer the advantage
of being simpler to produce and cheaper. The flip side is that it is a new
technology for the most part; new to most people. Because the intellectual
property was so concentrated, not many people have gone down a
commercialization path with aptamers yet. Therefore, it is still relatively
new to people. We are faced with all of the typical challenges of new
technology adoption.

CEOCFO:How do you address the
challenges?

Dr. Jackson:We spend a lot of time
trying to get our message out and educate the community. We do a lot of
trade shows. We have the domain of aptamers.com, where it is obviously
related to our materials, but anyone can post there; even our competitors,
education material, their posters and their publications. We do our best to
publish posters and we have peer reviewed publications in the works, as do
our customers. It can be a challenge, because many of our “for profit”
customers do not really want to tell their competitors what they are doing
or that they are considering aptamers. However, at least with our academic
customers, we expect a number of publications to come out in the next year
or so.

CEOCFO:Are you seeing a trend
in general towards aptamers or towards a change in thinking that might lead
to more use of aptamers?

Dr. Jackson:I certainly hope so. Our
business has increased every month since we have been in business.
Anecdotally, we see more and more new activity from others. In 2010 a
colleague and I authored a market research report on aptamers for a company
called BCC Research, and we put out an update of that report in 2012. A new
independent market research report has come out this year. That would
indicate that aptamers are starting to come up on people’s radar. I think
that for the most part people are realizing that some of that
priorintellectual property has fallen off. Therefore, I think that our
timing for getting into this business was good and the activity will
continue to increase.

CEOCFO:Is it difficult to find
people for your company that are familiar with aptamers and with the process
or are you pretty well set with the people you need right now?

Dr. Jackson:No, most of the skills
that are required are standard molecular biology skills, so the talent pool
is there. As is typical for many high tech industries, much of the talent
pool is made up of international and graduate students. And we have a steady
stream of people sending us resumes all of the time. I think that many
people or students graduating from undergrad and graduate school see that
this could be an industry of the future. Therefore, we get many excited
cover letters on resumes. We generally take one or two interns every summer
as well to help out. We have a very good talent base in Houston because of
the Medical Center. It is one the largest Medical Centers in the world so
.there is a large talent pool of people in molecular biology in the area.

CEOCFO:When you are speaking
with a prospective client do they understand the difference that Base Pair
brings to the table or is there an “aha moment” when they get the fact that
you are different and better?

Dr. Jackson:I think so. We are
always honing our messaging. We do a lot of online marketing, but we also do
scientific conferences and expos. There are sort of two tiers to that. There
are people understanding the potential advantages over antibodies and there
are people understanding Base Pair’s potential advantages over our aptamer
competitors. I think those are two separate issues. In terms of Base Pair’s
advantages over our competitors, our patent allows a quicker turn around,
higher through put and it allows us to address more targets at the same
time. Ourownershipmodel is different from most in that we stage the risk for
the client. They do not necessarily pay a very large amount up front.
However, we either get involved with licensing deals for the aptamer
sequences or lump some payments on the back end once their product is
already working in their hands.

CEOCFO:Getting off of the
ground is always an expensive process. Are you funded for the next steps?
Will you be seeking partnerships or additional funding?

Dr. Jackson:I believe we are well
funded, at least for our initial foray into the market. We would always
entertain additional capital under the right conditions. However, for the
most part we are happy and we have a healthy runway. We are rare for a
biotechnology company in that sometimes it takes years for a biotech company
to establish any revenue at all, and we already have a decent revenue
stream. Even on day one we had revenue coming in before taking on any
funding. We also supplement a bit of our funding with grants mainly through
the Small Business Innovation and Research program in the U.S., which is
set-aside federal grant funding for small businesses doing various high tech
projects.

CEOCFO:What is ahead for the
company?

Dr. Jackson:We are going to use our
latest tranche of funding to continue to get the message out and do some
more marketing. We have expanded our marketing presence through partnerships
and consultancies in Europe. We just received a contract from the National
Cancer Institute to make more aptamers to peptides; a small portion of the
proteins that are potential markers for cancer. The aptamers will also be
used in proteomic studies, which means understanding the proteins that are
involved in various disease states. Then we will just continue to
streamlineour operations and try to get more efficient so that we can make a
better, faster and cheaper product.

CEOCFO:Why should investors and
people in the business community pay attention to Base Pair Biotechnologies?
Why should Base Pair stand out?

Dr. Jackson:I think that, whether it
is us or anyone else, aptamers are going to stay on the technology front as
an important option in research and clinical diagnostics. I do not think
that aptamers will completely replace antibodies. I think it should be
viewed as another tool in the tool box. However, there is definitely going
to be aptamer based diagnostics and further therapeutics based on aptamers
in the near future. We are one of the early movers in this area. We are
adding follow on intellectual property and know how, andwe want to be, as
our tagline says, “The Aptamer Discovery Company”. Rather than people
internally setting up their own capability to make aptamers, we think it is
a wiser choice to outsource that function. We hope we stand out as the
biggest and highest quality player in the aptamer discovery space.

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“… aptamers
are going to stay on the technology front as an important option in research
and clinical diagnostics … we want to be, as our tagline says, “The
Aptamer Discovery Company”.- Dr. Bill Jackson